The health sector has been one of the biggest casualties of the 2014 Budget.
Despite its pre-election promise to not cut healthcare funding, the Coalition government yesterday revealed its plans to aggressively slash billions of dollars from the Commonwealth’s healthcare funding allocation.
Waiting times for surgeries and emergency treatment are likely to blow out and two cornerstones of our nation’s commitment to national healthcare; Medicare and free care in public hospitals may also fall. Added to this, the 61 Medicare Locals established by the Gillard government will be downscaled into smaller primary health networks, and our national bulk billing service is in tatters with an average trip to the GP now costing those who can least afford it $7.
In an attempt to make these changes palatable, the Coalition government has appealed to the nation’s sense 
of fiscal responsibly through a rhetoric of ‘efficiency’. Yet in reality, this term is likely to result in a stockpiling of healthcare problems down the track, especially if we forget about the importance of equity in national healthcare.
Indeed, in the wake of the 2014 Budget, it’s worth asking ourselves, is fiscal efficiency really what matters most when it comes to national healthcare? Should we not be concerning ourselves more with terms like equity and access? Doesn’t this make financial sense in the longer term?
As Distinguished Professor Fran Baum from Flinders University has rightly pointed out, the notion of equity isn’t just a nice idea for healthcare, it’s how we create a better and healthier society. In fact, as Professor Baum reminds us, “Countries that give people a fair go by distributing income relatively equitably do better on a range of measures of well-being including longer life expectancy, less crime, better child welfare and more trust”.
On these grounds alone, many health experts believe that the 2014 Budget has already failed the Australian public. By focusing purely on the rhetoric of financial ‘efficiency’, the fall out of the 2014 Budget is likely create greater differences between Australia’s rich and poor, and ultimately stockpile costly social health problems for the future.